Conventional devices for generating a short duration laser pulse, wherein the input laser pulse is injected into optical fibers with non-linear effect to widen the spectrum of the input laser pulse, such as those described in the publication by Schenkel et al., “Generation of 3.8 fs pulses from adaptive compression of a cascaded hollow fibre supercontinuum”, which is incorporated by reference, do not allow the use of high-energy input laser pulses because of damage to the fibers at that level of energy.